‘Toxic male influencers’ and teenage nudes normalising misogyny among children

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Barnardo's says misogyny has become “part of the background noise of growing up” as research found 1 in 7 children aged 13-15 have been asked to send a sexualised image of themselves online.

The survey found 1 in 5 girls reported experiencing persistent unwanted messages, including threats to share naked pictures of them, which had been sent privately.

But the charity warned that victims of abuse are going unheard, telling LBC that online influencers and damaging algorithms have normalised a view that girls lie.

Amelia Barlow, from Barnardo's, said: “We know that influencers, popular in the manosphere, are perpetuating really toxic and rigid notions of how men should behave and the myth that false accusations are made against boys all the time.

“That drip feed of information is trickling down into the real world.

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“Kids are seeing this from a really young age - the trad wife content, the manosphere content - and that's then translating into school corridors and how young people are treating each other.

“Misogyny is everywhere and we've got reports of girls being scared to go to school, being followed and harassed in public and avoiding parts of buses due to sexualised comments.”

The revelation comes as a public consultation closed on Tuesday asking how to better protect young people online.

The Prime Minister is considering an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s after meeting bereaved parents in Downing Street. 

He said: “The question now is not whether we do something. We are going to act, I’m very clear this needs to be something that is a game changer. The question is now only what we do, and we will be decisive.”

Labour Party Chair Anna Turley told LBC “everything is on the table”.

Having asked 4,000 teenagers, Barnardo's says 59% of teenage boys report feeling pressure to ‘act tough’ and hide emotions, because of what they see online.

A similar number said they believed people would think they were “boring” if they didn’t join in with group “banter”.

Speaking to LBC about his experience of growing up with social media, Paddy from Birmingham said he felt like he had no choice but to encourage jokes that he now sees as being wrong.

He said: “I found so much pressure in how I act, in group chats especially. It's very difficult to stand up and say that I don't like it and I find it offensive. I’d get abused for it or I’d get excluded from friendship groups.

“I had to just stay quiet to fit in and keep friends and probably in the past, I now regret that I have kind of laughed along and pretended like I enjoyed the jokes just so I didn't have that kind of exclusion from people.”

The new research found a quarter of teenage girls report being called degrading names online while 1 in 8 have been threatened with the sharing of their nude images.

Alexandria, from Liverpool, told us she struggles to escape harmful content online. “It’s quite common to come across posts that are like jokes putting down women and girls, making comments about women’s bodies, or that have controlling attitudes in relationships.

“Particularly at a young age, as a young girl, you don’t know what misogyny is and it’s completely normal as if it’s just funny or it’s banter. You don't really know it’s wrong or the impact it has on you when you grow up, until it’s too late.”

In December, the government announced plans to teach young people about consent at school, as part of Labour’s bid to halve violence against women and girls.

But the survey of young people found that even young girls are being influenced by narratives from the so-called manosphere.

On top of the 37% of boys who believed their female peers make up accusations about them “just to get them in trouble”, 23 per cent of girls were found to hold the same belief.

Former health secretary Wes Streeting told LBC’s Nick Ferrari that an outright social media ban for under 16s was needed to protect against a “wild west” of harmful content, accusing lawmakers of “being asleep at the wheel”.

He said: “If we take woodwork as an analogy, we were brought up to believe that you need to learn how to use tools.

“But what we would never have done is leave three to five-year-olds with a hammer, a saw and a set of nails unsupervised and said, 'on you go',  you have to learn how to use it.

“That’s kind of what we’ve done with mobile phones and social media platforms.”